I spend about 15 hours a week working on these 3 income sources and they almost pay all my bills. I started about a year ago and am building them all up in order to gain financial freedom, and so can you. Here are my top 3 passive income sources.

1 - Start Blogging

Blogging has to be on top of my list because I've seen success with it starting my very first week. I've picked a subject I'm passionate about, and I'm running with it. It is very simple to earn passive income from blogs once you do the research.

It has really opened my eyes to the ads I see online. I understand that the keywords on each blog I write have an algorithm behind them that pays the website owner.

It will eventually turn into passive income that leads me to make money while I sleep. My definition of passive income here is that I do the active work up front, then I make passive income while not actively working, like while I sleep!

I found that it was wildly simple to start a blog. There are tons of amazing videos on Youtube that will walk you through ever step even. It is quickly becoming an amazing way for me to share my financial story and hopefully influence someone else to improve their finances as well. I find that idea extremely satisfying.

A wonderful place to start your own website is with Bluehost.com. Sign Up Offer: Get started for only $2.95 a month! In addition to doubling as a portfolio, you can earn passive income from your blog. Use this link to sign up if you're interested in starting a blog.

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One way you can make money from your blog is through ads from a network like Google Adsense or affiliate marketing. I made $26 dollars from my blog the first month. That more than paid for the price of the domain and the $2.95 monthly cost for hosting. This quickly because one of my favorite ways to earn passive income.

Affiliate marketing is where you partner with brands and services to recommend products. When people purchase through your link, you earn a small commission.

You can easily make an amazon affiliate account, and it's insanely easy to create affiliate links and post them on your blog. This is great, especially if there is a product you stand behind.

You don't sell anything; you only connect your readers with brands. Tell your story about your experience with the product and be honest about the pros and cons and your in depth review of that product will brand you an expert. Take your time and explain things in detail about it. Post an affiliate link in the article and boom. Someone will find your article and buy with your link and you'll get some commissions.

Once a blog gets huge it's not unheard of that you can make $10,000 a month. My biggest word of advice here is that you need to be consistent. You will prime your readers to expect an article on schedule and it'll also tell google that you're serious about the blog. Stay on a schedule.

There are so many ways for you to monetize your blog. My current top sources of income from the blog in this order:

1. Adsense
2. Merch
3. Affiliate links

2 - Create a youtube channel.

I started a channel talking about finances and had a lot of fun doing it. I spent way too much on my camera (ended up getting it free with some finance magic, I'll explain later) I had a great friend hook me up with a microphone he wasn't going to use any more.

I was off making content. Now I haven't made any money from my channel yet as I haven't met the requirements yet! I have 1400 subs and 1,000 watch time hours. My main goal from this wasn't income which probable is the reason I'm still going with it, building up the passive income from this is a long term goal i had and i'm almost there.

1k subs and 4k watch time hours are required. Wow this seems like it’s steep, but I am growing the channel. It will be super exciting when I finally am accepted into the YouTube partnership program. Based on my current traffic to the channel I’ll earn $1,200 a month. That will dang near pay my mortgage.

A lot of these income sources are a grind to build. It takes time for to build your audience. Be patient with yourself if you don’t become a YouTube star in 3 months. I won’t lie, I lost a lot of steam around 6 months of posting on my YouTube channel. It started to get a lot harder to find the motivation to post a video that only got 100 views.

Keep in mind it’s a long play and you just need to keep at it and be consistent. This goes for both blogging and YouTube. Google will start to show your content more if you are posting valid and regular content. With time the passive income will start to grow as you grow your audience.

I have affiliate links on my YouTube and have earned enough to pay some of my utilities from my YouTube channel. It isn’t a wild amount, and it fluctuates wildly each month. But for not something is better than nothing. And I’m happy with where it’s at.

3 – Dividend investing

This is by far the easiest way for you to start getting passive income. My favorite part about it is that you can automate it. Passive income is so easy this way. It literally require very little work.

Here are my top 3 favorite dividend paying stocks right now:

1. O – Realty Income
2. AAPL – Apple
3. Main – Main Street Capitol

Realty income and Main Street Capitol are both monthly dividend paying stocks. They are very consistent, and both have a high safety dividend score. I take the income from those two stocks and invest them into growth stocks. I bought most of them in the march 2020 market crash. They were extremely discounted and was able to scoop enough of those up and get myself to $200 monthly income from those two holdings combined.

The apple stock I have is a growth dividend paying stock. I like the stock mainly for the growth play and the dividend that it pays is just icing on the top. I am in a wealth accumulation phase of my investing right now though so in my overall portfolio I only hold about 10% large cap companies and apple is the vast majority of that 10%.

Breaking down my portfolio is probably left for another blog post, but I just like to explain a little bit of my personal strategy as far as what I’m doing and why.

I liquidated most my holdings and reallocated to dividend paying stocks in the dip. I held on to the existing apple stocks I had in March 2020. I’m taking my income from all the stocks I hold to put back into growth stocks. It is a risky play, but I’ve seen some explosive growth and I’m beating the stock market by 60% over the last 12 months.

I won’t sell my holdings if we have a market crash. In fact, I’m not worried about a crash at all if it happens. I would be excited as the income from my dividends will be buying cheep stocks. And I’d probably up my monthly contributions into my stock portfolio if we had a crash. I am not planning on retiring for another 25 years so I’m not stressed about a crash at all. I just see it as an opportunity to buy discounted stock.

Conclusion

There you have it. These are three ways that I am earning passive income. If you have any questions, I’d love to answer any of them. Just leave a comment below and I’ll answer them all.

1. Blogging
2. Youtube
3. Dividends

Between the three right now I’m earning enough to pay for most my expenses. I’m not to the point yet where it can be a full-time job. But the great part about it is that it is growing every month and it by far is way more enjoyable that working any 9-5 job I’ve ever had.

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